Archive for the 'Technology' Category

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Greenville, South Carolina – April 2, 2014: “Don’t tell me what’s wrong, we know that; what are we going to do about it to get it fixed?” says Rollan Ross passionately, CEO of the 75,000-member-strong, pan-conservative grassroots Restoring America Together Network (RAT). He adds, “Everybody complains about our country and the direction in which it is going. We know that. What are we going to do about it? Our groups are focused on that goal!” RAT adds hundreds of members each day as many U.S. citizens are naturally drawn to the group’s simple yet succinct and elegant message of revitalizing American society by acting and living as our Founding Fathers intended. The group has been so successful because it is leveraging state-of-the-art communication technologies to organize and grow its ranks, such as the Facebook and Twitter social media sites, blogs/websites, YouTube, [i] and Internet radio. RAT is also successful because its membership reaches out to concerned citizens through word-of-mouth, phone calls, and local meetings – common grassroots tactics. This blend of technology and old-fashioned networking is one of the keys to Restoring America Together’s success.

Infosys has agreed to pay a record $34 million dollar fine for visa abuse. Infosys was circumventing the H-1B quota by bringing foreign workers in under B visitor visas instead. Such foreign workers have to return home every few months to renew their visas.

This is a very common practice throughout the industry — and it is not just the Indian companies that are doing it. When I worked for the now-defunct American company Digital Equipment, they were doing the exact same thing.

The most critical, clear and present dangers to US’ national security, homeland security and economy, are Iran’s nuclearization, Islamic terrorism, the explosive impact of the seismic Arab Street, the potential disruption of the supply and price of imported-oil and the declining US posture of deterrence.

The most clear and present policy to alleviate these threats would be US energy independence, ending dependence on unpredictable Arab oil producers, bolstering the US posture of deterrence, accelerating economic growth, improving the trade balance, reducing the budget deficit, lowering energy costs, expanding employment and availing more funds toward infrastructure, education, the elderly, Medicare and human services in general.

In a typically maladroit statement, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry recently complained that Israelis are too contented to end their conflict with the Palestinians: “People in Israel aren’t waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there will be peace because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment and of prosperity.”

What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:

In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce. Basically the NSA, as one of my readers suggested, is the digital equivalent of the TSA strip-searching an 80 year-old Minnesota grandmothers rather than profiling and focusing on the likely terrorists.

There is a fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States, the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone, not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:

The Guardian first broke the story, but now it’s being picked up by news outlets like the Washington Post. From the Guardian:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. …

In the last few years, a marked shift in Saudi thinking on nuclear issues has become evident. Saudi princes have explicitly and publicly stated that a nuclear military option is something the kingdom is obligated to examine if Tehran is not stopped in its march toward nuclear weapons. In March 2011, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to the United States, called for the Gulf states to acquire “nuclear might” as a counterweight to Iran should efforts fail to persuade it to abandon its military nuclear program,[1] a point he repeated several months later.[2] U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross confirmed that Saudi King Abdullah explicitly warned Washington in April 2009: “If they get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons.”[3] Ross’s quote of the Saudi king appears to be the first public confirmation of Riyadh’s position. An unconfirmed report alleges that Abdullah made a similar statement to Russian president Vladimir Putin in their February 2007 summit.[4]

Despite its wealth and status, the kingdom operates out of a deep sense of inferiority and vulnerability: Some of its neighbors, notably Iraq and Iran, are powerful and historically hostile; its long borders are porous; it has a large Shiite population of questionable loyalty in its sensitive oil-producing regions, and its strategic installations are vulnerable.[5] In Riyadh’s view, nuclear capabilities in Iranian hands would allow Tehran to dictate the Gulf agenda—including its oil markets—as well as incite the Shiites in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province, undermining the kingdom’s status in the Muslim world as well as the royal family’s grip on power.[6]

As the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear program worsens, those most likely to be directly effected by an Iranian bomb are showing greater alarm. While the media fixates on Israel and its possible reaction, other regional players have no less at stake.

Despite Riyadh’s long-held advocacy of making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, there has been much speculation in the last two decades about the possibility of its acquiring or developing nuclear weapons should Tehran obtain the bomb.[1] In the words of King Abdullah: “If Iran developed nuclear weapons … everyone in the region would do the same,”[2] a sentiment echoed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, former head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate.[3] Has Riyadh decided to go down the nuclear road, or is this bluster a desperate bid to stop Tehran’s nuclear program dead in its tracks?

The late Senator Daniel Inouye (D), Chairman of the Appropriations Committee and President Pro Tempore (third in the line of succession to the presidency) was the most effective architect-ever of mutually-beneficial US-Israel strategic cooperation. He was a tenacious defender of the US Constitution and the role of the legislature as a co-determining, co-equal branch of government; a humble American patriot and a realist who rejected wishful-thinking in the interest of advancing US national security.

The world now depends on the free flow of information. What is about to happen at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from December 3-14 2012, will surely change the world in ways that most of us cannot imagine. Google is taking a lead in objecting to this massive invasion and grab for control over the now self-controlled Internet; the EU is none too happy either. Some national governments like China, Russia, and Middle Eastern countries, and certain power-hungry agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) want to wrest control of the Internet for a range of very bad reasons. We must speak up to stop the erosion of freedom.

Iran’s nuclear problem remains unresolved, and seems to be irresolvable, as the Islamic regime is desperate for a nuclear bomb. Iran has not shown any interest in the offers made by the international community. However, there is a road not yet been taken, and that is investing in the Iranian people, who have experienced two major revolutions over the past 100 years.

Three years ago, the Iranian people showed that they were ready to take to the streets and protest against Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. In order to stop an apocalyptic, fundamentalist regime from acquiring a nuclear bomb, democratic states of the world need to change their policies toward the Iranian government.

Israel’s credit rating has been reaffirmed at A+ by Standard and Poors, at a time when S&P lowers the credit rating of an increasing number of Western countries. According to S&P, “the Israeli economy continues to generate solid economic growth and enjoy a net external asset position, even though the current account has temporarily turned negative. The stable outlook reflects our view that there is sufficient political will to prevent a sizable increase in the government’s debt burden, and that major security risks will be contained.” S&P noted that “there has been fiscal slippage on account of lower government revenues,” but added, “recent austerity measures and current growth levels should ensure that debt ratios modestly improve in the medium term.” Referring to the most important economic development in Israel in recent times, the discovery of large offshore gas reserves, S&P said, “We forecast that by the middle of the decade domestic natural gas production should contribute to improved external and fiscal balances (Globes Business Daily, September 30, 2012).”

While Israel’s economy is facing the consequences of the global economic meltdown (e.g., unemployment is rising at 7%, gasoline price is surging):

1. According to the August 24, 2012 “Commentator” article by Peter Glover and Michael Economides, “as the tension between Israel and Iran ratchets up, an interesting sub-text has developed over the role of Iran’s traditional backer, Russia… . 20 million metric tons of liquid natural gas (LNG) exported each year from the eastern Mediterranean into Europe [a reference to the supposed potential of Israel's and Cyprus' offshore natural gas reserves] would amount to about one third of current Russian exports… . Putin’s Kremlin is clearly rattled by the threat of decline for that which underpins Russia’s entire economy: its energy hegemony… . Russia supplies a quarter of all Europe’s (rising) natural gas demand… . But there is now a new kid on the block that could pose a very clear and present threat to Russia’s vital European market: Israel, along with Cyprus, and their upcoming potential status as gas exporting energy superpowers… . During Putin’s recent visit to Israel, he and Netanyahu agreed to form a junior company to [Russia's] Gazprom that would help develop Israel’s Leviathan gas field in the eastern Mediterranean… . Iran is suing Russia in the Court of Arbitration in Geneva for cancelling a contract to sell five divisions of the S-300 long-range anti-aircraft missile system… . the Kremlin appears to have higher economic and political priorities. Chief among them: ensuring its vast energy resources help it to remain a global superpower… ”